Understanding Music: The Nature and Limits of Musical Cognition (review)

Philosophy of Music tends to flow from three different viewpoints: (1) Aesthetics (Kant and Schopenhauer, for example); (2) Culture (Robert Walker, and others); and (3) Practice (for example, David Elliott and Christopher Small), and their variants. To critique 'a philosophy,' while ignoring its source, invites mass confusion and riots in the streets. But to leave one viewpoint to take up another does not make the first viewpoint go away. Instead it merely leaves questions that define the former view, and methods associated with their analysis, unanswered. Contrary to the hopes and dreams of many, adopting a different viewpoint does not mean that by doing so shows the invalidity of the former view, or that former questions are wrongheaded, of little intellectual or practical value, or out of date and irrelevant, and that a newly adopted position is demonstrably better or potentially clearer and more valid (that is, true) simply because it is new. Different viewpoints are just, well, different, better suited to answering certain classes of questions but failing to adequately explain others. So, to be clear, let it be said at the outset that Hans Eggebrecht's book comes from the (largely European) tradition of philosophy of music aesthetics, a stream of investigation rooted in the ancient Greeks, one that many music/music education philosophers, particularly North Americans, abandoned some thirty years ago when they turned instead to studies in music as practice (for example, in the classroom, community, and so on).

Eggebrecht (1919-1999) was a prominent twentieth century German musicologist, a prolific writer of historical and philosophical books and essays, though none—with one exception—published in English. Richard Evans' translation of Eggebrecht's last book is a welcome addition to the philosophical literature.

The book is a summary of Eggebrecht's work over a period of thirty years (roughly from 1970 until his death). As such, it is a mix of his earlier ideas (many now seeming quite dated) with later, more refreshing, ones. It is sometimes difficult to know, contextually, whether what he says comes from early stages in his career or is more recent. This matters because sometimes he seems to unknowingly change his mind as the book progresses. The ideas are complex; a thorough understanding of Eggebrecht's explanation of musical understanding requires considerable time and thought on the part of the reader.¹ But the effort is nevertheless worthwhile.

Eggebrecht's goal is to explain musical understanding through conceptual (that is, realization of musical structure) and non-conceptual (that is, aesthetic 'understanding') processes. The former is conscious and purposeful, the latter subjective though advantaged through reflection. "'Aesthetic' understanding is 'sensory.' . . . When we call music non-conceptual communication, we are saying that it is a form of communication devoid of linguistic concepts. . . . So, aesthetic understanding in its pure form is a form of understanding beyond any conceptual reflection in which what has been understood remains free of concepts and consciously formulated designations" (p. 8). Now, if this sounds familiar, it is. Eggebrecht is (understandably) immersed in the philosophical-aesthetic tradition of Kant, Schopenhauer, Schiller, and Hanslick, and, more recently, Suzanne Langer, Peter Kivy, Roger Scruton, Leonard Meyer, and so forth. So, why bother, then, reading, yet another rendition of a well-rehearsed view, one apparently abandoned thirty years ago by most in the field? Because, ensconced in a recognized traditional aesthetic position, Eggebrecht raises new questions that emerged from this tradition, especially those influenced by more contemporary research in musical understanding and particularly music psychology. Has Eggebrecht found insightful means for linking aesthetic theory with late twentieth century work in music perception? Is the announced death of aesthetics and aesthetic theory therefore premature?

Eggebrecht's answer is complex. Very roughly, his premise is that "the aesthetic understanding of music is by no means the same thing as hearing music [perceptually] and reacting to it. Understanding is a way of coming to grips with something and gaining knowledge of it, and aesthetic understanding...